Wine Giques

Little Morocco and the Night of the Banshee

 

A few weeks ago, my buddy Jeffy showed up for the holiday we call "Bah, Humbug! Day," with a heavy, beautifully-wrapped package from Vroman's.  (If you don't know Vroman's, you're not a book lover. If you're ever in Pasadena, go there.)

 

Inside the package?  Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.  Now, here's what I know about Morocco:  The closest I ever got was a trip to southern Spain, when Dubya was president, and the U.S. had embarked on our latest imperialist invasion. (No, I'm not bitter about #43.  Why would you think that?  Unless you read my other blog.)  Americans were not advised to visit Morocco, even though it was mere miles away, across the Strait of Gibraltar.  We did make it to Gibraltar, where we ate some English stuff, and the monkeys scared the crap out of my daughter.  But I digress.

So, the book became a totem:  How do you make Moroccan food?  Jeffy said:  "Let's cook some next week!"  I said "Sure!"  He said "Let's make this!"  I said "Not a chance!" (Seriously, "this" is called pastilla and it takes three days.  I'm ambitious, but not that ambitious.)

I settled for an Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad, Roasted Beet Salad with Cinnamon, and the pièce de résistance, Chicken Smothered in Olives.  BTW, I have learned that French is Morocco's unofficial second language, so it's appropriate to say "pièce de résistance."

Here's another Moroccan saying:  وكان هذا الغذاء لا يصدق ، وخاصة بالنسبة لطبخ المغربي لأول مرة.

It means:  "The food was incredible, especially for a first-time Moroccan cook."

Now, the interesting thing about Moroccan food is that it reflects a myriad of influences.  Given the country's location - prime fodder for young conquerers with land-lust - and its diverse population (ever wonder where Berber carpets were invented?), there's a little of this and a little of that in just about everything.  It's like the Moroccans sent the crazy conquerers and carpet-sellers on their way, and kept all the precious things that made their food so delicious. 

Which brings us to the wine, which came to us courtesy of our other dinner guests, neighbors S. and M. (I know what you're thinking. And those are really their initials.)   When I said "Moroccan!" they said "What wine?" and I said "I have no Moroccan idea!"  So they brought a wine that has a little of everything:  Banshee 2009 Mordecai.

The brilliance of the Banshee is that the winemakers collect precious small lots of wine from some of California's best vineyards, and blend them together into a Rhone-influenced, vibrant, spicy blend.  While their actual sources are secret and mysterious--genie in a bottle anyone?-- the resulting wine is not.  It's a bit bold, a little exotic, and possibly dangerously addictive. 

Just how I imagine Morocco to be. 

First Night and the Sideways Bottle

"What are we doing tonight?"  I asked Jeffy, early on New Year's Eve.  Having just bounced off a plane as an escapee from Snowpocalypse 2010, for me, 2011's first night was not destined to be a raucous affair. 

"We're cooking," said Jeffy.  "And we're going to drink a Sideways bottle of wine."

That got my attention. 

As a wine lover and a movie lover, Sideways was something of a seminal moment for me.  More affecting, certainly, than Bottle Shock (although Chris Pine's wig certainly made an indelible impression).  It is true that, when you're a wine lover, your relationship with the beloved grape sometimes takes precedence over relationships with other, more minor things, such as -- say -- people.   At least, that is what Paul Giamatti's character would have us believe.

But who can forget the penultimate scene in the movie, when Giamatti drinks his prized bottle of 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc, the one he was saving for his tenth wedding anniversary, from a foam cup in a fast food restaurant, by himself?  We all have our Sideways bottles, and the revelation is that they're not defined by their price points, but by the people we plan to drink them with. 

Jeffy's bottle?  Geyser Peak 2006 Block Collection River Road Ranch Sauvignon Blanc.  Compared to that Chateau Cheval Blanc, it's a lowly bottle, with a retail price of only twenty bucks.  But it was purchased on a romantic ramble through the wine country, with a love now lost.  We replaced that lost love with some Morbière cheese, a roast chicken, a bit of feline company, and lots of chatter, which almost seemed to do the trick:  there certainly was no wistfulness around the table as we ushered 2010 out the door. 

My bottle?  I actually have more than one.  Several that, like the Geyser Peak, were purchased to be consumed with lost loves, whose faces I sometimes see in my dreams.  But my foremost Sideways bottle?  A 2006 La Sirena Cabernet Sauvignon.  Made by Heidi Barrett (remember Chris Pine's wig?), a woman winemaker, and secreted away, to be uncorked with friends on an upcoming -- momentous-- birthday.   And, as lovely as the wine will be, its memory will be defined not by the moment when I drank it, but by the company I was keeping.  

Happy new year, my friends.   

Tips for Storing Wine

Although we Wine Giques like to share wisdom about wine and how it relates to parties, boys and shoes (not necessarily in that order), we also occasionally like to include some basic, useful info, just to prove that we know what we're talking about.  So, given the recent heat wave on the Left Coast, and Suenarita's recent departure for the sultry climes of the Deep South, we thought it might be useful to hand out a few tips for storing wine, just to remind ourselves that a little pampering goes a long way for just about anything. 

Wine lovers like to say that wine is a living, breathing thing.   While you may not be as attached to your wine as you are to your pet Chihuahua, wine is an organic substance that reacts to things like heat and light, often adversely.  Properly storing your wine ensures that you’ll have the best drinking experience, whether you’re uncorking your latest bottle tomorrow night, or a few years down the road.  Here are some tips for maximizing the life of your wine:

1)     Store wine on its side.

Wine bottles have been traditionally stoppered with corks for hundreds of years.  Cork is a natural substance that is easily moldable to the shape of the bottle, and also has the valuable trait of slowing the entry of oxygen into the bottle, which “oxidizes” the wine, changing its flavor and color.  Keeping a wine bottle on its side ensures that the cork remains moist, which is necessary to slow down that potentially nasty oxygen exchange.   Modern winemakers are experimenting with different kinds of closures – you may have purchased bottles with synthetic (generally a form of plastic) or composite (made with cork granules) corks.  You may have even purchased a fine bottle of wine with a screw top.  This experimentation is happening because cork trees are somewhat endangered, and because natural cork itself can generate mold.   These modern closures are quite effective, but haven’t been tested for long-term wine storage.  So, to be safe, keep your wine on its side. 

2)     Keep bottles away from heat and light.

When you sit in the sun too long, you get a sunburn, correct?  Heat and light also affect wine.  While many modern bottles are treated to screen out UV light, it’s best to keep your wine in a cool, dark location that is as free of variables in temperature as possible.  The best way to store wine is in low light, at a constant temperature of around 50-55 degrees F/10-16 degrees C for reds, and 45-50 degrees F/7-10 degrees C for whites.  High humidity is best, as well.  If you can purchase a small wine refrigerator, all the better.  

3)     Keep bottles away from vibrations.

This advice is directed mostly at red wines that you plan to store for long periods of time.  Vibrations can disperse sediments – which are tannins and pigments in the wine that break down over time – and keep them from settling, resulting in wine that feels “gritty” in the mouth.  Keeping wines free from vibration, and setting red wines upright for a while,  as well as decanting them before drinking, are useful ways to help the sediment settle and save you from a “rocky” drinking experience. 

4)     Keep bottles away from strong-smelling substances.

Remember that oxygen transfer that we discussed earlier?  Well, it can also bring strange smells to your wine.  A wine’s aroma is a large and important part of the drinking experience.  Storing your wine with your garlic may ensure that vampires will not come to share it with you, but you probably aren’t going to want to drink it, either. 

5)     Re-cork bottles that aren’t fully consumed … and drink the rest of the wine as soon as you can.

This is perhaps the easiest tip to follow:  drink all your wine as soon as possible after you’ve opened it.  Removing the stopper allows oxygen to enter the wine much faster, sometimes resulting in oxidation in a matter of hours.  Replacing the cork in the wine bottle, or using a wine bottle stopper, will slow this process somewhat, but usually only buys you an extra day or two.  If you like a glass of wine in the evening, aren’t inclined to consume an entire bottle, consider purchasing half-bottles and splits instead.

Et voilà!  Advice delivered.  Now back to boys and shoes ...

¡Micheladas!

My friend Marissa turned me on to this NY Times article on my favorite summer drink, the michelada.  Both she and I seem to love the versions they make at ¡Lotería!, a local authentic upscale Mexican eatery, with locations in Hollywood and at Farmer's Market (and yes, you must use those explanation points when you refer to it). 

And, as usual, even though it's written up in the venerable Grey Lady, you've got to hand it to La-La Land for pioneering the trend ... most NY restaurants don't seem to have heard of this tasty concoction, as the author himself points out. 

Score another one for the Left Coast.  What's the talley now?  Eleven-eleven million to oh, six?  Manhattanites, feel free to respond.  But not before you hoist a michelada or two.  

Photo from the NY Times.

Channeling Julia

Uff-da!  (That's for my friends the Jensen girls, Sally and Jen.  They say stuff like that where they hail from.)  It's been a busy few weeks.  A heady, inspiring, titillating few weeks, filled with great friends, great food, and great guzzling of luscious wine.  (See previous post for just a sample.)   I've had a stream of beloved foodie friends down from the Bay Area, which has refired (pun intended!) my passion for all things culinary, and stirred my soul to its core, like a good martini. 

Actually, I think it might be in the air.  My tribe seems to have burst onto the pop culture scene, with a vehemence that far outstrips anything that's been going on on the Food Channel.  It's all about Julia, you see.  Julie and Julia has awakened interest in She Who Rocked Our World (as she's generally regarded among restaurateurs and foodies) in a way that seemed impossible even in the midst of the general chef-worship that has permeated our national airwaves.  Julia's 40-year-old magnum opus is back on the best-seller list. Card retailers can't keep a "What Would Julia Do?" greeting card in stock.  And to top it all off, last Saturday was Julia's birthday, which precipitated a frenzy of French cooking in kitchens across the country.

So, what does this have to do with Wine Giques?  Well, it means I refuse to indulge in the worst of my weekday habits:  ordering out.  I'm determined to cook every meal I eat at home, at least until the euphoria wears off.  And believe me, thanks to my ex-husband the chef and my finely-honed sense of revenge, I have the cookbook collection to do it.  (Although I am lacking Mastering the Art of French Cooking, owning instead the more-definitively titled The Way to Cook.  I prefer to sidestep all the cultural nuances and go straight to the ...uh, meat, of things.)

Tonight was "what do we have in the fridge?" night.  You know the scene.  You saw it in The Big Chill:  the one where you stand in front of the refrigerator and stare.  Luckily, I usually have a treasure-trove of basics stashed in there:  Plugra butter, shaved Reggiano, fresh greens, stock, cream, olives.  And a few interesting things, like green peppercorns and dry vermouth (hey, I already mentioned the martinis).  Just to mix it up a little, I also opened the freezer and stared.  A bag of tiny frozen peas caught my eye, and we were off to the races.  I pulled out my trusty copy of Pasta Classica, and there it was:  Tagliatelle con Piselli, Salame e Prosciutto.   I made a few substitutions here and there, nearly swooned over the aroma of onions browning in butter, held back the salame for my batch of pasta to appease my vegetarian teenager, et voilà, dinner.  (The dish uses both the green peppercorns and the dry vermouth, BTW.)  I even barked out a cheery "Bon Appétit!" to the teenager when she came in to fill her bowl declaring "Ewww. I don't like peas ... but this tastes good."  

Lucky for me, the other thing I had stashed in the fridge was a bottle of 2005 Podere Il Caio Grechetto dell'Umbria, picked up from one of those shiny stacks at the front of Larchmont Wine & Spirits.  The buttery browned onions and the hint of vermouth brought out the nuances in the wine, lifting it from mere dryness to fruit-and-fennel-infused goodness.  I downed a couple of glasses and thought "time to write!" and here I am, imagining that I'm Julia, in the middle of an 8-year labor of love, looking forward to tomorrow night's dinner ... when there will be more friends in town to cook for, and new wines to uncork.  I've had a Julia quote on my Facebook page for months, which sums it all up nicely, as was her wont:  "Life itself is the proper binge."  Oh yes, indeed, Mme. Child, it surely is.

Noshing with the Native Napkin.

Da Wine Giques were in da house!  

Yes, Suenarita and her Own Personal Captain von Trapp™ came for a visit, and it was stupendously fun -- but the aforementioned Captain wrote about it much better than I ever could.  Since he also cooked the dinner, I'm going to give him his due props and just link right to his blog post:  

http://sorrynotmytable.com/2009/08/16/we-could-learn-to-love-la/comment-page-1/#comment-70

Suenarita and I were actually planning to do a joint videoblog that evening, but after reading this post, you'll understand that it was all we could do to drag ourselves to bed, while my Isaac Hayes channel on Pandora wailed away under the stars. 

How To Get Crabs

It was late in the day on Wednesday, about 5:45, as I recall.  My eyes were crossed from researching statistics and my ears were ringing from batting away rumors about Peter Jackson ("No, I'm sorry, I don't know what movie he's making next.  Yes, he is much taller than a hobbit.").  My reserves were low and that bottle of Orvieto Classico at home in the fridge was calling my name, as was the 90-lb. yellow lab who thinks he's a lap dog (hey, take it where you can get it).

And then the phone rang.  It was my friend Shannon, who said six magic words:  "We're going to the hungry cat." 

She had barely gotten the word "cat" out of her mouth, when I said "I'm in," tossed the laptop in the sparkly first-dot-com-boom backpack, and headed out the back door.

My companions, Shannon and Johanna, met me at the house.  Three moms, no kids, cocktails and chatter on our minds.  (Johanna, the most stylish of the three, sported flowers in her hair.)

"There's a thing at the hungry cat tonight," said Shannon, "They said something about crabs. I'm not sure we should go."

The "thing about crabs" turned about to be a repeat performance of the hungry cat's annual, extremely-coveted  Crabfest -- a celebration of those exalted creatures I grew up cracking: delicious, delightful blue crabs.    Desperate not to miss a singular opportunity, I convinced the lovely Shannon and the stylish Johanna that we should go.  The rest, as they say, is history.

First good sign:  We were seated next to Jennifer Coolidge.  Now I love me some Jennifer Coolidge.  She's one of the finest comic actresses working today -- she even rocks the occasional Hilary Duff movie, and that's saying something.

Second good sign:  Our waiter was a committed flirt, and he had a thing for Johanna, with her dual Austin and hair-flower accents.  (This posse, BTW, was populated by Southern girls.  Chicks who can't tell their apple fritters from their frakkin' Fendi's:  not permitted.)   A wink, a nod, a layer of newspaper coating the table, a quick cocktail order, and we were off to the, uh, races.  The I-can't-wait-to-crack-me-some-crab races.

Market salad.  Watermelon salad.  Fresh shucked oysters.  Ahi tuna.  And the piece de resistance:  six freshly-boiled, seasoning-coated, deliciously fragrant blue crabs.  Although I hadn't cracked one in years, I was surprised how quickly the technique came back to me.  In no time at all, I had my crabs picked clean, doing right by all my ancestors whose bones litter the shoreline of the mighty Chesapeake Bay (probably picked clean by crabs, BTW.  It's a circle of life thing).

I don't know what it was that called to me:  maybe it was the memory of the warm East Coast waters, helping my grandfather pull in the crab pots.  Maybe it was thinking about sitting in my buddy Jen's garage, floor lined with newspaper, where the Old Bay crab boil and the Mickey's Big Mouths ran free.  Maybe it was just the fact that it would be delicious to see all those so-called sophisticated Angeleno's trying to figure out how to pick apart a crab without splashing stinky sea-juice on their Prada's (not possible, BTW).  Whatever it was, it turned out to be a blast.

Beverages?  Well, we were seduced by the hungry cat's spectacular, inventive cocktails.  My favorite, the Echo Park, was on hiatus (like all good Hollywood stars), so we ventured into something called "Sweet & Vicious" -- Luksusowa vodka, heirloom melon juice, roasted jalapeño and lime -- and a Maryland-themed classic called the "Pimlico" -- Early Times Whiskey, lime and orange juice, with fresh mint.  Their deliciously potent hold was so strong that we each had more than one, foregoing the usual glass of wine (and reserving the right to call Giovanni the house boy to drive us home, if necessary).  Never fear:  I visited Simon, our local hot wine guy, to ask for wine reco a couple of days later.  His pick:  Mje're 2007 Alezio Rosato.  It comes from a third-generation family-owned winery, the first winery in Italy to be devoted to the production of rosé wines.  I doubt many people hailing from the Chesapeake could pronounce the names of its two grapes (Negroamaro and Malvasia Nera), but they sure would agree that it'd be damn tasty with a bucket full of freshly-steamed blue crabs and a garage floor packed with friends.